


There are many names in history. None of them are ours.

by rozsaks



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Being Haunted By A Variety Of Issues, Classical and Moderns Ideas About How Ghosts Work, Cryptic Warnings From A Dead Boy You Once Loved, Dealing With The Fact That You're A Murderer Technically, Domesticity, Friends to Lovers, Gratuitous Drinking And Smoking, Homophobia, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insomnia, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Recovery, References to Depression, Several Tender Feelings, Vomiting, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 05:32:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11799450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rozsaks/pseuds/rozsaks
Summary: So; I spent my nights with my fingers entwined in Francis' hair as he slept soundly in my arms, recalling of every instance wherein Henry Winter had seemed to be my scholar, my savior, the stoic genius who stole my mind and planned my downfall with meticulous ease.





	There are many names in history. None of them are ours.

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be something along the lines of what I wanted as the ending of the book, if the story had been permitted to keep going. A strange sequel of sorts is what I'm trying to describe, I suppose. Most of this was loosely organized, generally unedited by anyone besides myself, and incredibly self-indulgent. I'm fairly certain the audience for this consists of <5 people, but I'd love to read comments about what you thought, if you enjoyed this.
> 
> Writing is still very much a hobby for me, do forgive me if parts seemed difficult to understand. Much of Francis and Richard's issues are based very much in my own struggles and issues, and I tried to convey it realistically as I could.
> 
> The title was take from 'Little Beast' by Richard Siken.

I hadn’t been to Boston in very nearly five years, give or take, and I hadn’t seen Francis in, at least, a handful of those years. I had turned twenty eight a few months ago, which was frankly, fucking outrageous. 

For a long time, I worked under the assumption that the deaths my friends and I were, more or less, responsible for would have bonded our group together for life, at least merely out of morbid solidarity, but life with consistent friendship was a fickle concept for the remaining few of us. Francis and the twins never returned to Hampden that next fall semester, and of us all, only I was the only one who had ended up graduating, although with a degree in English rather than Greek. I hadn’t heard from either Camilla nor Charles in eons. I could only imagine what Julian was up to these days, presuming he was alive and still out in the world enlightening others in a more responsible manner than he had with us. I had long since resigned myself to knowing that our golden afternoons of drinking together and telling each other terrible truths and affections were long past and unlikely to ever come back. It was fine; there’s something important in keeping details of my history in their proper places. It kept me from ever daring to feel too idealistic or romantic about that story.

So; Francis’ suicide note. Or at the very least, the suicide note he written with me in mind and had mailed to my home, had been too short. It had been dripping with an emotionally unavailable decadence that was so characteristic for him, I could hardly stand it. 

I spent a few hours of blurred anxiety wondering if he was really dead while on an overly crowded plane to Boston. I was determined to find whatever remained of him, alive or dead. Mostly for my own comfort of mind, I suppose. 

The last I saw of Francis was in a bar in Brooklyn, where we distinctly avoided each other’s presence after a lot of tense eye contact across the busy pub. Between then, and when I had flown across the country to see if he was still of this world, I had gotten a girlfriend. Her name was Sophie Dearbold, and it was she who convinced me that we were in love and had me move back to California with her before she broke up with me half a year later. Now I mostly spent my time bored and unpleasant to be around, pouring over notes and manuscript copies of Jacobean dramas for a dissertation I was working on to fill my hours. 

Six months into living in southern California again, Sophie decided she wasn’t happy with me. I wasn’t open enough, she had told me apologetically. The way I looked at her after my aimless nightmares frightened her. It was very much a ‘it is you, not me.’ situation. So I studied plays on my own in the plasticine heat of Los Angeles: Webster and Middleton, Tourneur and Ford. In my heart, I had a deep penchant for Kit Marlowe’s work and spent afternoons in the unbearable heat comparing his lines to my own life while I drank. I wrote horrible poetry for myself in my free time, pretending to sound like O’Hara and Ginsberg. I thought aimlessly and constantly about stagnancy of being alive, the cruelty and awful romance of it, and generally felt like a ghost. So ultimately, a suicide note from a once dear friend might have been exactly what I needed to kick me back into reality.

Typical of North-Eastern weather patterns, it was pouring rain when my plane had landed in Boston. A ‘torrential downpour’, as Camilla once described a similar storm a long time ago. My first cab took me from the airport to Logan, where I made a handful of calls in a payphone to a handful of different hospitals asking after anyone recently admitted under the name Abernathy. I didn’t have any coins left in my pockets on that last call and the relief that swept through me was unbelievable when the person on the other end of the line told me Francis was staying in their hospital. So then, my second cab took me from Logan to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. 

The rain had streaked down the inside of the second taxi’s backseat window in thick rivulets. The window was broken in such a way that kept it from rolling up the final inch of its frame. The fare counter kept ticking, slow and consistent. The driver was quiet (I offered him an extra five dollars to not say anything for the rest of the ride as soon as I got in) and I was faced with a metacognitive realization: the fact that Francis had always had these subtle tendencies for self-violence (since before we had been in school, if my memory served), which were standing alongside my concerns that, perhaps selfishly, my lack of recent involvement was somehow partially to blame. An ambulance had pulled into the emergency driveway in front of the hospital while I paid my cab fare. My small carry-on bag slide uncomfortably off my shoulder and the cab drove off. The pouring rain had turned to an annoying mist, by that point. The puddle I stood in had soaked through to my socks while I watched a team of medics rush whomever was writhing and bloody inside to the ER.

I felt humid and damp inside the hospital. Wet ends of my hair stuck to the back of my neck and the flat of my forehead while I waited, patient and bitter, for the directory nurse to finish gently chiding an emotional patient near a broken elevator. The patient was a woman with a deep brown plaited braid, a thick cast on both of her arms, and tear-streaked cheeks. The nurses carefully reprimanded for leaving her room when she wasn’t supposed to, and she was taken away by a different nurse, a man who had circles below his eyes. Once the lobby drama settled down, the directory nurse pointed me to the appropriate way to find Francis’ room (private, sixth floor, make sure the knock before you go in.) The flights of stairs that all reeked of astringent and stale food. I took the stairs two at a time and my chest was heaving painfully from exertion by the time I reached the third floor. At the sixth floor, I walked the last fifteen or so steps leading up to his door, tried to even my breathing, and messed with my coat and hair, attempting to seem presentable. I knocked, softly, and his unmistakably bored accent told me to come inside. 

He was older. We both were, I suppose; nearly thirty and both miserable. I had spent the handful of last years still imagining him young and handsome. A marble statue come to life and fitted in tailored black wool, poised in the corner seat of Julian’s classroom; untouchable and perfectly aware of himself. His face now was too gaunt, skin clear but worryingly pale, honey red hair pushed out of his eyes sloppily, a hint of stubble around his jaw, with sunken eyes and dark bruises below them. Ultimately, he looked miserable. Deathly and unhappy and rather quite like a skeleton with skin plastered on like paper-mache over an armature. Yet, somehow, I was terribly relieved to see him and he, I think, to see me as well. I stood rather foolishly in the door of his room for at least half a minute with us both staring, unbelieving, before he smiled and held his arms out and told me to come over already. I crossed the room in an instant and practically collapsed over him in bed. His hands were wrapped up in a thick gauze that went down to his forearms, but his fingertips reached to push strands of wet hair out of my face. He pulled himself up to sit in the bed, the blanket falling away, and carefully wrapped his arms, lean and cold, around my shoulders. My face tucked into neck and his cologne, still the same, was there behind his jaw: sharp, smokey, golden and orange, sweet and bleeding like an overripe fruit left out in the sunshine for too long. 

For a few quiet moments, we simply held each other, friendly and long-overdue. I felt him sigh in my arms. Once, ages ago before Bun and Henry died, on some silvery hungover morning in the summer at his aunt’s home, he came behind me, draped his arms around my chest and rested his head against the spot between my shoulder-blades while I made my coffee. He had whispered, _Touching is good, you know._ I half expected him to give me the same advice now. But instead, he tapped my right shoulder gently and I pulled back and away until I was sitting near the foot of the bed, feeling too far away. He got out of bed (dressed in unflattering hospital pyjamas), walked to a small table across the room with folded linens and found a white towel from the middle of the pile.

“Sorry about this all. You’ve gotten older, Richard.” He told me while handing me the towel, careful with his bandaged hands. “You sit up straighter. The glasses are new.”

“They’re not very new, I’ve just gotten a bit near sighted lately. But, my god, what happened to you, Francis?” I asked, while I took my frames off and tucked them into my coat pocket, my eyes not leaving his, pleading for information while I halfheartedly dried off. 

“Come on, you obviously read my letter.” He was sad and smug, my general concern clearly not an important part of his daily affairs. His arms crossed, gently folded in front of his chest and held by his own cold hands. He was quiet, thinking. I was tired and endlessly patient.

“I’m getting married and can’t stand her.” He finally told me, sitting at my side near the foot of the bed. “It really did seem like the more pleasant option, you know: warm bath, glass of wine, a few quick slashes and it’d be settled! But now I’m stuck here and I just feel worse.”

“Her?” I actively chose to ignore discussing the more gruesome details of his suicide attempt, but I couldn’t shake the image of his blood skating over the top of an overfilled tub and spilling onto ceramic floor tiles. The faucet hot and screaming while water poured over the sad boy in the water.

“Oh, God, she’s horrible, Richard! Absolutely uninteresting. Stupid as a rock, as well. My cousins tell me constantly that she’s like a black hole for good conversation, and they’re entirely right.” He shuffled around in his bedside drawer until a flattering portrait of the woman was produced and handed over to me. She was our age, give or take, and very pretty in a very conventional, boring way that leant no clues to any kind of personality beyond something resembling the shape of a Barbie doll.

“She’d be a fantastic house-wife, I’d bet,” He snorted. “you have to marry her?” He nodded with uninterested disregard and took the photo back when I handed it over.

“My grandfather found out, in the most melodramatic way you would ever had expected. I was seeing someone, a lawyer, his name is Kim. He’s a bit of a drunk, but you’d like him, though I don’t expect he’ll want to see me again... anyways, grandfather insists that I go through with the wedding he’s planned or I’ll get cut out of the family estate without hesitation.”

“Would that be so bad?” I asked after a few beats of consideration. He looked aghast. “You could get a smaller apartment, a job or something, you know. Support yourself.” 

It seemed like a pliable suggestion; as far as I could remember, he loathed most of his family anyways. His eyes cast down, long eyelashes decorating the tops of his cheeks, and he reached back to the drawer next to his bed. He stuck a cigarette between his lips and handed me a plastic lighter. The tendon to his thumb had been severed, so the flint and steel had to roll beneath my thumb instead.

“I’d really have to die, then.” He decided dryly.

“I do it, Francis; normal people do it. It isn’t so difficult.” 

“But I’m not used to it, Richard!” He snapped at me, obviously feeling bitter and scorned. He closed his eyes for a beat, and then opened them again. “Let’s talk about something else. I don’t want to fight after not seeing you for so long.” 

He leaned back into the pillows and sucked in the smoke. On his exhale, he kept talking, “Tell me how you’ve been, Richard. I feel like you already know too much about me just by looking.”

So I did. I told him about my dissertation, about being dumped by Sophie, about hating California, about my onslaught of undiagnosed depressive tendencies that were likely directly related to being in California, about how some mornings I’d get caught up in nostalgia and almost cry with the heartache, about the way I’ve only managed to drink nothing but Gin and Tonics in varying proportions for the last three months, about the songs I hear on the radio, about the rain that had ran down the inside of my cab window earlier.

He cut me off mid-sentence about something irrelevant, “Richard, you need to move here.”

“...Do I?” 

“You sound depressed and lonely.” Blunt as always. “Heaven knows I understand that, at least. Finish your dissertation here.” He handed me the cigarette.

“Where would I stay, Francis? Come on.” I sucked in some of the nicotine, feeling skeptical of Francis’ plan. Sophie had made me give up smoking a year beforehand. I told him so when I breathed out a cloud of smoke around us.

“Priscilla and I aren’t living together. Yet, at least. My family has been paying for an apartment downtown here, I’m staying there to get out of the house and avoid them as much as possible. Stay with me as long as you need to. Get an apartment somewhere else, I don’t care. We can go back to Brooklyn if you want. We should at least be miserable together again, though.”

I opened my mouth to reply, suddenly remembering an image I conjured while in school: Francis and I both in wheelchairs, as old miserable friends, waiting for the other to keel over. A small knock at the door broke me out of my trace and introduced a plain nurse, who in turn introduced the girl from the photo. Her hair was tied back in a pink ribbon and a pink cashmere sweater was draped carefully across her shoulders with the sleeves knotted in the front of her chest. Francis shot me a split-second look of misery before quickly putting up a tight smile for her. 

“Priscilla.” His voice was polite but decidedly bored and toneless. Her heels clicked against the tile floor and she marched over, a frown on her face, and plucked the cigarette from his lips and stubbed it out in a nearby ashtray. She gave a perfunctory kiss to the top of his head.

“I thought we agreed to no more smoking, sweetie.” Francis’ eyes rolled and his upper lip twitched in annoyance. 

Priscilla, made-up and as beautiful as any wannabe model, finally turned to me with an alarmingly white smile. “But who are you? I didn’t think Francis had other visitors!” 

“Priscilla, this is one of my friends, Richard. He’s come from California.” Francis explained.

“You don’t say!” She gasped in mock-surprise, her blue eyes looking dramatically between Francis and I, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Richard, I’m sure I’ve heard a ton of good things about you!”

“And I about you.” The air from my lungs felt heavy and I wasn’t sure if that was a good enough reply considering I knew next to nothing about her. I shook her hand pathetically and looked to Francis for help. He shook his head softly, subtly, so that Priscilla wouldn’t notice. She sat down in the chair beside Francis’ bed, still smiling.

“So, what were we talking about?” Her teeth were blinding. The black hole had arrived. 

“I, uh…” I had stammered. 

“Richard was just on his way out, sadly.” Francis told Priscilla. 

“I’d like to visit again tomorrow if that’s all right, Francis.” I decided, while I stood and began to usher myself out of the room.

He turned to me, “Of course. You know where to find me.”

“Nice to meet you, Priscilla.” She waved politely and I closed the door behind me. From the hall, I saw her scoot her chair to face Francis in bed and began chattering. I met Francis’ eye through the glass pane in the door on my way out. Halfway down the hall, I had flagged down a nurse in the hallway who seemed to be momentarily aimless and asked for directions to a good hotel.

The rain had stopped when I left the hospital with a small sticky note of directions, which was conveniently only a few blocks away, but the dark clouds still lingered. I walked around, a little lost, and eventually found the hotel, which was less of a hotel and more of bed and breakfast ran out of a beautifully well kept Victorian home. I checked in, and lay awake all night trying to sleep and thinking about the serious lilt in Francis’ voice that I didn’t remember being there before. 

~~~

Breakfast was dry toast slathered in cranberry jam and black coffee from the kitchen of the hotel. I spent the morning walking around the neighborhood, trying to familiarize myself with the landscape, which I only did to moderate success. I finally got to the hospital around noon. The directory nurse at the hospital, the same old woman as yesterday, waved me away in recognition when I walked to her desk. 

(“It’s not like he’s switched rooms overnight, just go on ahead, sweetheart.”)

I trudged up the stairs again only today they reeked of astringent and rotting flowers. Francis was sitting on the edge of his bed when I arrived, modestly dressed for his tastes but still put-together as ever. Even from the hall, I could tell he was doing well, and his disposition seemed to ease up even more when I walked in the room and found Camilla sitting serenely in the chair next to his bed. 

She too, somehow, had grown older. Her hair was cropped terribly short and her cheeks were more hollow now. She had dark eyes and dark circles, but she hadn’t become less beautiful because of it. She stood up to greet me and a fond smile came across her face. She met me halfway across the room with a hug. My infatuation with her, suddenly revived after who knows how long, felt like it was boiling over and spilling out of my chest. 

“Hello, Richard.” Her eyes were fond, exhausted. She smelled of jasmine and dusty rooms. Francis stood up and pulled on a black coat, knocking me nearly breathless with how suddenly he looked nineteen and beautiful again. 

“Priscilla is busy with wedding plans today, so she won’t interrupt again.” He told me, “Also, guess what.”

I tried not to smile so widely, but my hands were hovering near Camilla’s shoulders and the grins in the room were contagious. 

“What?”

“I’ve come to visit for a few days as well.” Her voice was sweet and endlessly pleasant.

Francis was meant to be released the next day, but he charmed his nurses (hospital-designated and personally sought out and paid for by his mother) into letting him go out for this afternoon as well. Almost immediately, he took Camilla and I to a small, cozy, townie pub. We spent the afternoon and much of the evening catching up and drinking Irish whiskey in a dimly lit corner booth. Camilla offered up everything she knew about what Charles was up to (skipped out of rehab with a married woman, living in Texas, might be a father, washing dishes, not speaking to her anymore). Francis complained about his wedding and I waxed poor-poetic about grad school and how miserable the West is. We laughed, Francis got a bit weepy and apologized for this being the reason we finally decided to see each other again. Camilla cried, carefully, over how dreadful things seemed to be. My heart fell from my chest and into my glass of ice and watered down whiskey. By the end of the night, we were all thoroughly drunk and feeling particularly bittersweet. Camilla helped me deliver Francis back to his hospital room in one piece, and I walked her to her hotel. 

Camilla and I had cut through a park, taking the long way back to her hotel, according to her. In the moonlight her white skin looked a ghastly lavender. We paused on a bridge, for whatever reason I can’t recall. The old streetlamps, likely once genuine oil burning lamps, now gave off a tinged orange fluorescent glow that cut through the heavy waters below.

“I love you.” I blurted out, suddenly, while she leaned delicately over the edge of the bridge to look down into the water below. 

“I love you too, Richard.” She told me, absently, not looking up.

“No, I’m serious. I want to marry you.” This got her attention.

“I can’t. Taking care of grandmother takes up all my time. You’d be miserable.” She told me plainly, her perfume of whiskey and geraniums carrying through the night air.

“I can help you. I wouldn’t mind, honestly.”

“What about your dissertation?” She asked.

“I don’t care. It’s useless anyways. Let me be with you.” She turned away, shaking her head ‘no’, and looked towards the black water coursing below us.

“I’m not who I was, Richard. I can’t even remember the last time I read a book.”

“I still love you.” I insisted.

“I can’t marry you.” Her voice was still even, but threatening to collapse at any moment.

“Why not?”

“Because I still love Henry!” She finally snapped at me.

“I do too!” I countered, loudly, without thinking. She paused, collecting her thoughts, and turned back to the river.

“But that couldn’t possibly be enough. We both know it, Richard.”

I was acting defensive for no reason. She was right: in no way would it have ever possibly been enough for either of us. I let it drop and we crossed the bridge. The silence was dreadful, but not unexpected.

“I still see him, sometimes.” She finally confessed as we neared the entrance of her hotel. 

“Excuse me?”

“Feel him, I guess. His presence, as silly as it sounds. I’d know him blind, and sometimes it just feels like he’s just behind my shoulder. That if I turned around, he’d be there waiting for me.”

I watched her move from the shadows of the sidewalk onto the well-lit front steps of her hotel, her sad eyes still gauging my reaction. 

“Julian used to say ghosts were real. Projections of our loss and desperate wishes and memories.” I tried offering as a kind of solace.

Camilla only sighed and went to open the heavy door of the hotel. Somewhere, I obviously missed her point.

“Goodnight, Richard.” 

~~~

I checked out of my bed and breakfast the next morning and retrieved Francis from the hospital with my bags in hand.

“Well?” He asked me, point blank, while fixing his scarf outside the hospital.

“‘Well’ what?” I asked, he rolled his eyes.

“Are you staying or going, Richard?”

I didn’t want to return to California. There was nothing left for me there, aside from some meager belongings and most of my dissertation notes. His eyes were imploring. 

“Staying.” I sighed, after an expectant moment. 

He smiled, and stepped onto the curb of the street to hail a cab. I opened the door for him once we flagged down a taxi, still worried about his hands, and tossed my bags in the trunk. Francis gave the address to his apartment and approximately one ten minute drive later, we arrived outside an old brick, luxurious looking apartment building. Francis paid while I got my things. The doorman said hello to Francis and I. The elevator bank was a straight line from the front doors of the building, and they stood elegant and gilded with fine metal-work in an art-deco style. The doors were a shiny yellow metal that shone so brightly it reminded me of a mirror. Our reflections stood side by side, separated by the crack between the sliding doors. When they opened, another tenant shuffled out of the elevator and into the mailroom just behind us, against the far wall. We stepped in and two of Francis’ pale fingertips pressed the button for the sixth floor. He led the way to the apartment’s front door, graciously insisting I walk in first.

There was a small foyer, which led directly into a living room of sorts that was separated from the kitchen by a wall that had a window counter cut out of its center. There were a few doors down a hallway. Francis immediately began taking off his coat and asked for mine as well. He hung them carefully in a tall closet that had a mirror hanging on the inside of its door. 

“Make yourself at home, I suppose.” He told me. “I’m going to go have a lie down.”

I nodded absently and patted his shoulder while he walked past. He spared me a glance over his shoulder and I went to snoop through the apartment. It was immaculately kept despite Francis’ absence from the space. I shuffled through his cabinets until I found a tea kettle and his stash of tea, which was exclusively loose-leaf. I put on some oolong and opened the tall windows in the living room on the off chance a breeze decided to roll through.

When the tea had steeped and cooled to a good temperature, I sat on Francis’ couch and sipped it. A breeze came through the window and hung near the wooden floors, making my feet cold. I wasn’t thirsty. My palms scalded against the hot porcelain mug. It was a serene moment; quiet and calm, until the floorboard across the room creaked softly, as if someone was padding across the room with careful and decisive steps. A shadow retreated down the hallway and so I called after Francis. The apartment was quiet, after that. 

With my mug in hand, I walked down the hall, careful not to slosh the hot liquid over the edge of the cup while I moved. Francis’ door was still swinging slightly, open and adjacent from its jamb. He was sprawled across his bed with one arm tossed across his eyes, obviously asleep. His chest rose slow and even with his breaths. On an impulse, I left the mug of tea next to his Rolex on his bedside table. 

Then, I was suddenly filled with the odd feeling of being in someone’s bedroom without permission. He had an antique bureau with shiny bits of jewelry and accessories spread across the top in one corner. The closet door was open revealing a vast blur of black or white expensive looking garments. A large, wood trimmed and scratched up mirror leaned against the wall. Its edges were black or chipped away, ruining the reflective sheen below the glass. A small turntable was on the floor, a collection of vinyl records stacked against its side. The odd bits and ends of his room’s decor placed his tastes and preferences solidly between the years of 1894 and 1956. 

He sighed loudly and pulled himself off the bed and I flinched.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly five. I brought you some tea.” I gestured at his side table. He let out a pleasant sigh and reached for the mug.

“Camilla’s coming over in an hour for dinner. I don’t think I’ve got anything to cook but it’s fine.”

I moved the leave the room.

“We’ll go out and eat oysters until we’re sick.” I suggested. Francis nodded and sipped at the tea.

“Richard, did you drink half of this or have you just forgotten how to fill a mug?” He called after me.

~~~

I managed to get by living out of my suitcase and sleeping on Francis’ rather luxurious, overstuffed sofa for a week and a half before I realized I would rather die than face the idea of returning to California. Francis had been absent for most of the morning, until he emerged from the bathroom, clean shaven and dressed in black silk shirt, before he announced he had to deal with wedding preparations today. He stopped in front of a mirror to fix a cream colored scarf around his neck. 

“I always feel like I’m going to my own funeral instead of these awful meetings.”

“Francis, if I move my things in here would you really let me stay?”

“From California? Of course.” His eyes flitted to my reflection in the mirror. “I already told you: stay here, get your own place, it doesn’t matter to me.” 

He finished the knot in his scarf and moved to the closet in the hall and deliberated on which coat to wear. I nodded and turned to look at my pile of poorly folded clothes in my suitcase. They needed a wash soon. I needed a better place to be.

“Lock the front door if you go out. I’ll be back this evening.”

I wished him luck. An ivory coat was folded over his arm and he stood beyond the door, far too still for a moment that went on far too long. His shoulders braced and he marched out of the apartment, closing the door solidly behind him, leaving me and my thoughts alone in the living room. 

I started a load of laundry, my things and some shirts Francis had left on the floor of his room. I washed the breakfast plates we left in the sink earlier that morning. A mug of cold, half drunk coffee left a stain on the counter. The organization of the cabinets was still unfamiliar so I left the plates on a towel to dry. My sighs seemed to echo across the walls. 

At noon, while I spilt toast crumbs across the hardwood floors in the living room, I found Francis’ telephone and called Stephan Richmond, an exceptionally polite and boring boy from my graduate program who was by far the closest thing I had to a friend left in California. He owed me more than a few favors for editing his work a few months ago. The phone rang and rang and rang and I rehearsed what I was planning on asking while I ate. Finally, the line connected.

“Hello?” I wondered if it was too early to be calling there. 

“Stephan? It’s Richard Papen”

“Oh, hi, Richard. Where have you been?”

“Boston. A close friend of mine has been really sick. I’ve decided to stay with him for a while, but I was hoping to cash in on those favors you owed me.” 

“Yeah? Sure thing, buddy.”

“I was hoping you’d mail me my notes for my dissertation. They’re all on top of my desk in my apartment. Do you remember where that is? I’ll call my landlord ahead and figure out the details, you’d just have to show up and get the books. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”

He agreed to the plan cheerfully and hung up with a wish of health for my sick friend. I called my landlord next, and spent the afternoon racking up Francis’ telephone bill while I explained the situation as gracefully as I could to the confused old woman who owned the building. I held the phone by its heavy base and marched around in a circle that was restricted in size by the wire holding it to the wall. Occasionally, I would throw a nervous glance over my shoulder, feeling like something else was in the apartment, but knowing I was alone. By the time evening rolled around, Stephan had apparently come and gone to pick up my research materials and I forfeited my lease and waved the security deposit on my apartment. When Francis returned home it was close to ten in the evening. He looked miserable and particularly drained. I was officially homeless with a box full of my meager possessions being shipped to Francis’ apartment. 

“How was it?” I asked after Francis collapsed on the sofa beside me with a groan.

“Fucking awful.”

“Want to talk about it?” I tried. He scowled but didn’t have it in him to really complain. I went into the kitchen and poured him a drink. I returned to his side with a glass of scotch and ice in each hand.

“If I talk about it I’ll feel like the boy who cried half-hearted suicide.” He downed his glass in one deep swallow, coughed, and dropped his glass somewhere on the floor. I sat next to him and offered him my glass as well. He shook his head and rubbed a hand over the base of his throat.

“I look at her and I just think about how miserable and loveless I’ll have to be for the next-- I don’t know-- ten, fifteen years or whatever. If I can make it that long. I guess I’ll have affairs but the thought of living with her makes my stomach churn.”

“Tell them you won’t do it. You can’t possibly keep up this charade of agreeing to it all.”

His eyes welled up and he stared at the ceiling. “I’ve got to, Richard.”

“You don’t have to do anything!”

He scrubbed his face with the back of his hand and breathed a few, trembling breaths before he spoke. “I don’t think I’ve got it in me to tell them off. I don’t know what I’d do if I got cut off. I feel sick.”

I didn’t say anything at first; he kept looking at me like he already knew what I was going to say again.

“When I got your letter, I was terrified you were dead. But all I could think of, was that we were all just going to drift apart and keel over, one by one? It’s so awful. We deserve better than to live lonely and miserable until we all end up buried alone across the country.”

Francis nodded and wiped at his eyes again.

“I’m sorry, Richard. Everything is so ugly and tragic now.”

“It’s always been tragic and ugly with us. It isn’t your fault.” I insisted. He seemed to dwell on this.

“ _Forgive me, for all the things I did, but mostly for the ones I did not._ ” He muttered after a moment. 

The words hung between us, heavy and important. I slammed back the scotch in my glass and it burned my throat. Francis stood up then, finally removed his coat, and looked down at me, his eyes rimmed in a bloodshot red.

“Would you come lie with me?”

He looked broken; lonely and depressed in a way that knocked my heart around painfully against the sides of my chest. I nodded dumbly and let his hand pull me off the couch and guide us into his bedroom. He changed into pyjamas and found me sitting, half undressed and terribly out of place on the edge of his mattress, before dragging me up and onto the pillows with him. We slept facing each other. Francis’ foot slid cautiously along my calf and his eyes searched mine (for what, I wasn’t sure, but I hoped he found it. I hoped he’d find anything he might need right there.) Francis sighed and rolled over in the bed until his back faced me. The room was dark and still. I thought, vaguely, of the last time we kissed. Perhaps, I had been expecting something similar to happen, yet through the night, we only slept: Francis before I, and then eventually, myself. Sort of. Truthfully, I had barely slept at all for the last few months, but the gentle weight of Francis’ shoulder pressed against mine through the night was constant and reassuring each time I jolted back from the fine line between asleep and awake. In his bed, face to unconscious face with him, I heard the soft inhales and exhales from him, until a door creaked rather loudly in the living room. I waited, still and gently seized with curiosity and panic, for something else that never came.

~~~

I woke up alone in Francis’ bed with half the sheets thrown over in a rumpled mess. He had put a record on so the music drifted in and out of the rooms in a quiet hum. I sat up and got out of bed. Near instantly I recognized the song as a Lennon-McCartney: _believe me, when I tell you, I’ll never do you no harm..._

Steam was pouring out of the bathroom and into the hallway and a soft hum was floating somewhere amongst the cloud. Inside the tiled room, I had slid behind Francis at the bathroom sink and went to sit on the edge of the bath. 

“Do you really use a straight razor?” I asked with a teasing smile.

“It really is better for a shave, believe it or not.” He muttered. “Not everything I do is purely for aesthetics. Some of it’s practical.”

I watched his deft hands shave his jaw, ached to touch the soft skin there myself. My intrusion into the room did nothing to deter his routine, so I stayed quiet and watched. Once his razor was on the edge of the sink basin, clean and put away, he pulled out an orange plastic bottle and undid the cap. He shook out three white pills and dry swallowed them. His eyes caught mine in the reflection of the mirror, remembering I was there. He turned and held the bottle out to me.

“Want some?”

I eyed the label underneath his thumb: _Wellbutrin_ , a prescribed antidepressant. 

“Painkillers.” He supplied for me. I remembered all of our Hampden afternoons where I dealt with his hypochondriac tendencies when no one else would indulge him. Did I really have any pain to kill? Francis certainly did. I refused them, and he shrugged before recapping the bottle and returning it to it’s spot in the medicine cabinet. 

“You should try to get your hands on something as well. So you feel better.” He told me. It was a genuine suggestion, but the way he spoke carried a childlike understanding of it. He could see I wasn’t well, and he didn’t want me to be that way. 

“You’d just as well steal them when I wasn’t looking.” I smiled.

“Sharing is important.” Francis told me through a mouthful of toothpaste foam. He spit into the sink. “Anyways, I’ve got to go to another wedding thing today.”

“Didn’t you just go to one?” 

He laughed, hollow and empty and echoing around the small bathroom. “I know. It’s just appearances, I think. Something about picking out stationary or flowers or something. Shouldn’t be nearly as long.”

I pulled a damp washcloth off the edge of the sink counter and scrubbed my face. 

“I’ll go with you, if you want.” I offered once my face was clean and red.

“It’s probably best if you don’t.” He finally told me after a minute of thoughtful consideration. “Thank you, though. It’s good knowing you’ll be here when I’m back, at least.”

I looked away, embarrassed by his honesty. He rambled on. I nodded along, responding at the appropriate breaks in his speech. For the most part, my attention was elsewhere. My heart was drumming in my chest and I couldn’t figure why. Next to my hand along the edge of the bathtub was a bright stripe of rusty orange. I scratched it’s edges away with my thumbnail. For a moment, I thought it was paint, until the morbid realization settled in my chest that it was his blood that hadn’t been washed away yet. I rubbed it away with the pad of my thumb and an overwhelming sense of loss flooded over me like a cold spray from the showerhead above.

~~~

“I thought Henry might have had the right idea, but this whole ordeal has just been solidly miserable.” Francis had told me over a late lunch a week later with a solemn laugh. 

Camilla had been in the city just long to see Francis out of the hospital, but had to return home shortly after to be with her Grandmother before anything unfortunate happened while she was away. She graced Francis and I with a sad goodbye, a half-hearted promise to visit again soon, and a kiss for each of our cheeks. 

Since then, Francis and I had settled into a nice routine of faux-domesticity that was bordering on genuine; I was interviewing for part time jobs in the neighborhood and cleaning the apartment and working on my dissertation when I felt like it (my package from California arrived a few days after the call to Stephan). Francis was away most days preparing for the wedding but always returned home at night with odd subdued affection, bottles of alcohol, and various gifts for me. Most of these gifts, however, were new clothes to replace my wardrobe. _Since all your things are ugly and in California_ , he had told me the first night he came home with four new Paul Smith shirts in my size, but I digress. Francis had promised me a proper lunch out because I cleaned his dishes for the fourth night in a row.

“I haven’t gone to see their graves in ages.” I told him, casually.

Not that I hadn’t been thinking of them, I remembered details of them on a near daily basis, in the odd way that I did. I could often have trouble recalling certain broader aspects of their personalities, but I knew wholeheartedly that Henry’s posture only ever slackened when he smoked. That his left hand slightly trembled while lighting a wooden match for fear of being burned. I knew Bunny’s gait had always been crooked to the right because his family all had an issue with pigeon-toed feet. I remembered the aquiline hook of Henry’s nose against his silhouette and the gap in Bunny’s front teeth that managed to make his laugh sound like a hoary whistle. The way Henry’s voice turned solemn and soulful while reciting Greek poetry for me with his sleeves rolled to his elbows in a rowboat. The charming, playful squint of Bunny’s eyelids while he poured chilled champagne from a porcelain teapot into dirty cups left outside on the porch overnight. The sneer of glassy pleasure that rolled across Henry’s face as two bullets exploded against his temple. The windmilled panic of Bunny’s arms as he went over the edge. No, I had not forgotten them. Far from it.

“Neither have I, but you haven’t even been on this side of the country; you can be excused.” 

Francis began fidgeting with his mug of tea and went quiet. His eyes followed the collection of tea leaves that hung to the bottom of his mug. My eyes followed his hands while they swirled the mug around the wooden tabletop along its bottom rim.

“It’s not like I was ever an especially good friend anyways.” He spoke absently. “This needs a shot of something, I think.” 

“Do you remember how you used to drink and I’d drive us around until you sobered up for your appointments, and then I’d drink and you’d drive home instead?” I asked.

Francis smiled then. “Except when we were both drunk and driving.”

“Only the best of times.” I reminded him. He called over his shoulder for the waiter to bring our bill.

“It’s a bit far to visit Henry, but let’s go get a bottle of something and make a day of seeing Dear Old Bun.”

I drove us in Francis’ mustang convertible, which I had been amazed to find out he still drove, to a party store plastered with neon lights on its front windows. Francis went inside alone, insisting I still don’t have any taste for good booze after all these years. It was a nice afternoon at the moment, partly cloudy and warm enough, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off the dark clouds swallowing the horizon. It would rain again, I was sure of it. Francis returned with a fat bottle of whiskey clutched in his gauzy palm.

He drank, straight from the bottle, in the passenger seat, while rambling on about nothing. He was much more talkative than he was when we were in school; highly opinionated and constantly buzzing with thoughts and judgements on anything he saw. I had my fair share of shots from the bottle. The freeway lines only blurred a touch and the top of my head buzzed comfortably and Francis seemed to be on the sober side of half-buzzed. I taped out and pulled over so Francis could drive. Switching spots was a completely avoidable and brief catastrophe of Francis crawling across the seat, pushing me into the gear shift, and claiming his spot in the driver’s seat. I clutched the bottle’s neck after that.

For nearly all of the trip, I had no idea where we had been and only followed Francis’ directions until we somehow arrived in Connecticut. We didn’t know how to get to the cemetery on our own, so we had to drive to the Cochran’s household and find our way from there.

“What a god-awful night that was.” I muttered, staring at the house’s odd architecture from the safe distance of the road as we drove past. 

“The only time I wanted to genuinely die more was when I had spent the night pressed against a doorframe drinking fucking Budweisers with Bun’s inconsolable father.” He said. “Talk about depressing.”

The highway pushed up against the edge of the cemetery. Driving down that stretch of road was when I finally recognized where we were as it had somehow remained relatively unchanged from the day of his funeral. Francis parked in a little lot in the front, and we walked the same path to Bunny’s grave that we had walked so many years ago. The graveyard was still vast and vapid, and that was comforting at least; nothing seems to change very much for the dead. Francis and I seemed to have changed too much, in different respects. The thick gauze wrapped around his hand scratched my wrist whenever he reached for the bottle was nothing but a reminder of those changes. We now had an unspoken, slightly uncomfortable distance between us still that came with growing up and growing apart and growing away before now we were finally growing back together.

Francis drunkenly stumbled into my side a few times, and laughed it off, called it his ‘cemetery gait’ while we walked along the iron fences that led us further and further into the graveyard.

Bunny’s tombstone was a dreadful thing; still the newest grave in his family’s plot but not by any means new looking. The headstone was a thick, ugly granite block engraved with his full name, his birthday and the day the coroner had guessed that we killed him on. I couldn’t even remember the exact date myself. 

The grass over his grave was thick and tall; overgrown in a way that it hadn’t been in my memory. I could practically see the ghost of Henry in his pallbearer’s suit, smearing mud across his white dress shirt across the grave from where we stood. Touches of moss were growing up the sides of the headstone, reminding me that time had indeed somehow passed since the last time I was here. A tacky bouquet of wilted flowers looked sad in their plastic vase on the ground. Somewhere behind the family’s plot, next to a row of nicely maintained deciduous trees, fern bushes had been growing, green and still unfurling their fronds, reaching out desperately for sunlight.

“Jesus.” Francis said after an empty moment. We both kept staring. 

“ _Why, looking for new ferns, of course._ This is so fucking morbid.” He shook his head and took the bottle out of my loose grip.

“He didn’t deserve it.” I said.

“I’m not sure. I really did hate him, some of the time.” 

“Oh, really?” I was under the impression we had killed him because he was untrustworthy and inconvenient. Just a thorn that needed to be pulled out, essentially.

“Absolutely. He could be so horrible, especially to me, when he wanted to be. Aside from his general airs of obnoxious foolery he was so proud of, he was just an ass most the time.” Francis took a final swig of the whiskey and poured the last ounces of alcohol out onto the grave. It hung to the leaves of the grass like morning dew before it slipped into the soil like heavy alcoholic raindrops. I nodded quietly.

“I don’t even think he liked whiskey that much.” Francis told me bitterly. I crouched down in the grass.

“I don’t feel like an evil person for doing it. I always thought after a while, I’d get swarmed by the guilt of it or something, but I’m not. I never have been.” I finally confessed, to both Francis and Bun six feet below.

“That absolutely makes you sound like a murderer, Richard.” Francis told me, snide and bored. He lit a cigarette.

“I guess so.” I plucked a pebble from between my shoes and placed it lightly on the top of the tombstone. “Light me one, too, would you?”

He did, “Thought you didn’t smoke anymore.”

“I don’t, but I don’t particularly care anymore either.”

~~~

I finally got a part-time job in a local bookstore that Francis found appalling because it catered to a modern public audience. It kept me busy in the long days of Francis being absent. I reorganized books on their shelves and got to run the cashier sometimes. I tried to pay a semblance of rent to Francis for letting me stay with him, but he would take the money and return it back into my bank account a few days after the fact. The worst part about the job was the late hours. 

The apartment was dark when I returned home some evening. It had been storming on my way home. Quite literally, I had been stuck under a bus stop for twenty minutes waiting for the rain to let up enough that I could see my way home. Water pooled around my feet, dripping off my coat in a circle on the hardwood floors of the foyer when I got in. The apartment was dark and empty so I assumed either Francis was still out, or he was home and in bed brooding over something. I stripped out of my wet layers and made my from out of the door. Francis appeared around the corner then and met me halfway up the hall with a towel. He put the towel around my shoulders and held the front closed around me with a loose grip. Something was off between us. His brow was furrowed yet he lingered close to me. 

“The radio said it would be pouring all night. I was worried.”

“Alright?” I asked. He nodded and swallowed back the words behind his teeth. The storm flashed outside, consistent and honest in the way it illuminated our melancholy bullshit, and he released his fragile hold on the towel. He left me in the hallway and moved silently towards the living room. The lightning had decorated the apartment in a clear light and I saw that he had thrown the windows in the living room wide open. In the dark, he laid down on the floor, feet crossing delicately at the ankles and resting on the low window sills.

“Francis?” I asked after him, not sure exactly what I was worried about, or what was bothering him. He didn’t move off the floor so I began to scrub the water out of my hair.

“Would you come sit with me?” Not exactly a demand, but only a humble request. 

“Alright.” 

The towel was abandoned on the floor in the hallway. My knees, sore and unused to crouching so low, creaked when I laid down. Francis laughed and called me old. Once I settled, the scene became quite peaceful. The dark room became lost amongst shadows, letting the two of us watch the stormy sky in the windows like one watches a play. We became the audience, kept apart from the action only by a few inches of distance and a simple window frame. The roofs across the street were dark. The sky, as it outlined them, was an soft slate grey. Perhaps it was the sound of raindrops spilling onto the concrete below our window or perhaps it was the feeling of laying oneself open and vulnerable to the storm, but I felt a unique sort of calm that I hadn’t felt in ages. There were fourteen seconds (I had kept count) before the thunder crashed, a short and deep rumble of the clouds high above us. At the eleventh second, Francis reached over and laced his fingers carefully between mine. His palm was cold and flat along the top of my hand, unique but not uncomfortable. The cold breeze of the storm rolled through the open windows and covered us like a delicate cotton sheet. 

“The wedding is tomorrow.” I mentioned.

“I know.”

We were still. 

We were quiet. 

His hands weren’t bound up in the gauze anymore but I could see the collection of angry scars along his wrists peeking out from the undone ends of his shirt. His fingertips rolled in small circles across the soft skin behind my thumb. He breathed out a heavy sigh. The lightning was getting brighter, more frequent.

“I always adored storms like these.” He took his hand back. The clouds outside rolled in ominously, until the storm was hanging low and heavy over the building.

I tore my gaze away from the storm, and caught his elegant profile against another short bout of lightning. The thunder crashed and he grinned sideways at me, glancing from the corners of his eyes. The lightning made him glow like an angel and he pulled himself off the floor to lean over me. A flash, small and seemingly unimpressive, lit the way for him to duck down and kiss me, two seconds before a final, climactic cacophony of thunder rolled above us, shaking the foundation of the building, punctuating the scene clearly. He was sweet and smokey, like fruit and cigarette ash. He bit my lower lip and pulled himself off me, leaving me confused and breathless on the ground.

“I’ve already told you I’m really not fond of you.” He grinned at me.

“Oh,” I let out a breathy laugh. “that’s too bad, isn’t it?”

“Too bad, indeed.” And he ducked down to kiss me again. 

~~~

Francis left a suit out on the edge of the bed for me the morning of his wedding. He told me I was to be his best man, and that he hoped it wouldn’t be too obtrusive for my schedule that day. That was all he told me all morning. 

Halfway to eleven, his grandparents swept into the apartment before either of us were completely dressed, ushering quickly us out of the house and into a black BMW parked outside the apartment building. Francis was quiet and fidgety with his cufflinks while his grandfather, a stern old man with a face that clearly echoed Francis’ own, lectured him passively about not ruining anything today, which I never quite figured out what he was expecting Francis to do. I didn’t feel it was my place to speak and so I did not. 

I was conveniently abandoned and left to my own devices once we all arrived at the church. Francis was swept away by his grandparents and his mother (who had met us outside) and I found that I didn’t really know anyone else who was there. I wandered aimlessly through small crowds of surely distant family members, all with Francis’ bloody red hair, and occasionally got to introduced myself as the best man to his confused relations and soon-to-be in-laws. No one paid me any mind beyond that.

Slipping past a gaggle of stout, toxically perfumed women in rayon dresses, I found a dark hallway that was seemingly desolate, pardon the open door at the end with a yellow light spilling out. I spared a glance at my watch to find there was a half hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. 

I knocked gently at the door before opening it. A hand reached out from door, grasping my wrist tightly and pulling me inside. Francis looked over me wildly in vague recognition and relief. I only heard the door get slammed shut fast behind me as he had reached behind me and shoved it closed. We were in a bathroom that wasn’t much larger than a tool closet and Francis was trembling before me. His eyes were frantic and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his tie was undone around his high collar. A plastic razor, cheap with three dull blades, was clutched in his right hand and an angry knot of shallow scratches were littered on his opposite arm. His angry suicide scars just below his wrist were healed, ugly and rough, but healed. The rest of his forearm was raw and jagged looking at best. His right arm had a few, scattered scratches but not nearly as many as his left. Beads of blood were only just poking through the irritated skin. It was certainly the type of scrape that would clot in fifteen minutes or less, but that didn’t make the situation any more comforting.

“Jesus, what are you doing?” I asked and made a grab at the razor, which fell from his fingers to mine easily.

“Coping. I couldn’t do my tie properly.” His voice was scarcely a whisper.

“The ceremony is about to start, you can’t do this.” I told him.

“I know. I know I can’t.” His gaze fell to the grimy church linoleum underfoot, shameful and embarrassed.

“Are you sure you can do _this_?” His knees began to buckle and I immediately grasped his shoulders, struggling to keep the both of us standing.

“Richard, I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. I don’t want to be with her.” He felt boneless in my hands. He was clutching at the lapels of my coat. His desperation was so heavy and tangible I was struggling to breathe on my own.

“We’ll leave, we can walk out now. You’ve-- come on-- you’ve got to stand on your own and we’ll go. We’ll go home.”

“I feel so fucking sick.” He muttered into my collar and we sunk to the floor together with our knees knocking together uncomfortably.

At that moment, the door slammed open. A set of hands tugged on the back of my coat until I was pulled out of Francis’ hands and pushed into the hallway. His grandfather loomed over Francis, outraged and furious and solidly between the two of us. He began screaming but it fell on deaf ears while I scrambled to my feet. Francis hid behind his arms instinctively while his grandfather’s arm pulled back, ready to strike. I grabbed his wrist and pulled back. There was a definite crack that sounded more like a cartoon sound effect rather than a real bone breaking, but nonetheless his grandfather grunted in pain and fell to the side. I pulled Francis off the ground and we stumbled down the dark hall into the much too bright transept of the church. Sunlight was beaming in from the windows along the ceiling. A rather sizeable crowd of people gawked up at us from their seats in the nave. 

“What the fuck are you all looking at?” Francis asked, loud and bitterly, clutching at his own bloody arms. His words echoed as confidently as any sermon and a hushed murmur of gossip immediately began drifting between the pews. I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and we marched through the crowd like that, down the excruciatingly long center aisle. I pushed open the heavy doors and Francis spilled through them and almost directly into Priscilla, who had been cluelessly waiting for her wedding to begin this entire time. Her confusion and shock was laughable when she was so ornately decorated in cream taffeta and lace. 

“Party’s canceled, dear.” Francis spat at her while he marched past. I followed his footsteps and mouthed an apology to her.

The sun was beaming outside, and suddenly the tuxedo was too hot to wear. Inside the cool stone walls of the church, it had been comfortable. Now the heat slammed into me like a freight train. Francis had stumbled down the front steps rather quickly before veering off to the side, where he then vomited rather grossly into a potted rosebush that was sitting on the sidewalk.

I rushed over and rubbed his shoulders, muttering useless reassurances while he heaved stomach acid into the muddy plant. We hadn’t made dinner the night before, and he probably had nothing but hors d'oeuvres all morning. He never did eat enough. 

The stench of it made me gag but I swallowed the urge back. He finished abruptly with a ragged cough and wiped his drool away with the back of his hand.

“Now what?” He sounded whipped and dismal. I looked to the doors of the cathedral, which burst open to reveal Priscilla and her obnoxious white dress fluttering in the breeze.

“Let’s fucking get out of here before your Grandfather comes to strangle us both.” I said. 

Francis tugged his sleeves down over his bloody arms and the wide spots of red stained through the white silk. Somewhere, in the ordeal, he must have torn the cuts open wider and deeper. I stripped off my tuxedo jacket. He grabbed my hand and we began walking home.

Every light in our home was turned on when we fell into the apartment. Francis was dizzy and immediately had moved towards the bathroom, where the kept the antiseptic and bandages were kept. I paused in the living room, remembering vividly the way that I rushed to turn the lights off before we were herded out of the apartment that morning. I tossed my coat onto the couch, and oddly found a stack of books (Francis’ classical Greek collection that had been translated into French) on the floor in an even column that stood about knee high, rather than in their usual place on the bookshelf. I picked the top book up and flipped it over, slowly making my way through the brief explanation of Homer’s work. I never was quite as fluent as Francis was.

“Come help me with the gauze, please.” Francis called after me. I hauled the books onto the table and rushed into the bathroom. 

When we emerged later, changed and clean and bandaged and exhausted, the books were back upon the bookshelf as if they hadn’t been moved at all. I didn’t bring it up with Francis.

~~~

So our lives went on. Following true to his threats, Grandfather Abernathy did cut Francis out of the family estate and estranged the poor man, yet the night he phoned Francis to tell him never to contact anyone in the family again, the pair of us celebrated with a bottle of champagne and enough quick kisses to laugh the night away. 

~~~

The following week, Francis quickly decided that Boston wasn’t the place for us, partly out of fear of running into his newly estranged family, so we packed up and moved into a slightly worse apartment in Brooklyn. I secretly hoped that whatever oddness resided in the Boston apartment would stay there, but that didn’t seem to be the case. I still couldn’t sleep and saw shadows from the corner of my eyes like fleeting memories and wisps of smoke. Francis had gotten a job to help cover rent, and things seemed to be going terribly well for us. That is to say: my nightmares didn’t wake me up as violently. Francis stopped having to buy boxes and boxes of bandages to keep under the sink. My episodes of self-isolation and emotional stagnancy never lasted more than an afternoon. Francis began consuming calories from food rather than cigarettes and booze.

In the evenings, Francis particularly liked walking through the city sidewalks, watching the people. We would drink from a bottle and smoke like chimneys and crack up over little fantasies and stories we made about the strangers around us.

One evening, we came across a portion of Central Park that had been fenced off, presumably for construction or something. He held his cigarette out to me, and I took it. He began slinking up and over the fence, jumping from the top down to the other side, landing with a smug grin and asked for his cigarette back through the fence. 

“We’re getting a bit old for this sort of thing, aren’t we?” I asked after I missed the landing and stumbled on the wet grass beside him. He laughed and caught the shoulder of my coat before I collapsed.

“Have you noticed you can only enjoy the park at night, and even then you still might get stabbed? That’s fun. I just wouldn’t be caught dead here in the day. ” He said.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Too many fucking mothers with ugly toddlers and weirdos playing crappy saxophone for singles and spare change.” He laughed loudly.

We walked in tandem, our steps mirroring each other while we walked through a field of slightly overgrown grass. Tall trees lined either side of the park enclosing us in the large park. Francis’ face was carefully outlined in copper light from the glowing ash of his cigarette. We were close enough that, in the night, alone in the park, no one could tell our arms were linked comfortably together. Sooner, or maybe later, we came across a playground, which gave me the distinct uncomfortable sensation of being somewhere at the absolute wrong time. The moon was waxing but had enough light spilling onto the ground to illuminate a massive slide, a merry-go-round, a few oddly located swingsets, and a colorful jungle-gym that was diluted in the night. A few benches and a single payphone were dotted along the perimeter of the playground.

"Have you ever seen a photograph of yourself?” I asked, and headed towards the ladder of the iron slide in the middle of the playground. 

Francis barked out a sudden laugh, ugly and interrupting, while he stayed on the ground below me. 

“Of course.” 

“What about a photo that’s been taken without you realizing? One from an angle you can’t see in a mirror?” I kept my grip moving along the rusted iron bars of the slide until I reached the top. 

The slide was a story and a half tall, give or take. Likely far too tall for any child to be bubble-wrapped and safe under the watchful eyes of parents while they played. The perfect height to cause some serious damage while still keeping its guise of ‘safe and friendly’. Perhaps, that’s why the park had to be fenced up at night; there was a danger that lurked in the oxidized dust that crumbled against my palms as I climbed up, and up, and up. For a fleeting single moment, the shadows near the ground caught Francis’ frame in a way that posed him as a threat, silent and circling below me like a hungry beast. I wondered if Bunny had appreciated the view that came from standing at such a height in the same way I was. 

“What are you getting at, Richard?” I heard the grass, stiff with dewy morning frost already, crunching below the soles of his shoes as he moved to the bottom of the slide, clear and fondly painted in the moonlight. My heart ached at the endearing, confused tone of his voice.

“Seeing yourself like that, unfamiliar and strange, despite knowing it’s still yourself. That’s how being with you feels.” I took the first step forward, marching loudly, too quickly, moving faster and faster yet, down the slide next to where Francis was awaiting my arrival with a confused grin and an extended hand reaching out for mine. 

“That’s quite romantic.” He told me when he helped me step off the end of the slide. He blew a cloud of smoke in my face then, and we continued on our walk with hands clasped tightly together, palm to palm, heart to heart.

~~~

It was a sunny afternoon and Francis had brought in the mail. It was mostly nonsense, he told me while shuffling through the stack of envelopes. He had hovered over my shoulders while I laid out my work. I had pulled the big windows in the living room open to let in some air and spilled my dissertation notes over the table. Technically, my semester had ended and I was no longer a real grad student because I dropped out, but some afternoons it became important for me to finish my dissertation anyways. He sat across from me, fidgeting and slicing through envelopes with a heavy brass letter-opener loudly, trying to get my attention without looking desperate. During our recent time together, I had learned to tell when he was feeling slightly abandoned for no real reason. 

“You’re acting like a fly. Leave me alone for a while.” I didn’t look up from my drafts. Tough love.

“Don’t want my company?” He huffed at me, a touch offended.

“Not while I’m trying to work, dear.” I glanced at him over the edge of my glasses, trying to seem serious about working today, and he rolled his eyes and picked up his keys off the counter.

“I’ll go get groceries then.” 

“Good. You need to practice being independent. Don’t forget to get more crackers, we ate the last of it a few days ago.”

“Sure. Work well.” He leaned down and kissed the top of my cheek quickly and left the apartment.

With Francis gone, I truly settled down to work. I had spent a few hours silent, pouring over the latest draft of my dissertation, drinking vodka with two ice cubes, reworking ideas and struggling to find perfect examples amongst the thousands of lines of plays. When the sunlight was golden and shadows had grown long enough to stretch across the broad living room, I took off my glasses. I dropped them onto my notebooks with a clatter and rubbed my eyes. Behind my work at the table, in the kitchen, there was the telltale sound of a match flaring up after getting dragged across a strike-board and the heavy sigh that could only come from a long-time smoker. 

“Francis, I thought you locked the door behind you.” I said loudly enough for him to hear me without turning away from the table, still rubbing at my sore eyes. 

“You’re happier than the last time we saw each other.” A voice that was distinctly not Francis told me. I spun around, instinctively grabbing the letter opener off a pile of mail at the end of the table, ready to face a home invader with a weapon and a desire to rob me blind, only instead finding Henry, elegant and capable looking as ever, standing across the floor from me.

“But never happy enough, are you, Richard?”

I blinked, confused, waiting for his visage to disappear. Yet, it was undoubtedly him; I had imagined that exact slope of his shoulders too often to mistake him for anyone else. He was facing away from me, leaning a hip against the kitchen counter, caught in the middle of the the coppery evening sunbeams, looking like a hazy reflection from a dirty window. His stature, stone-cold and impossibly handsome, even in death, was suspended like dust in the light. He shook the match around until the flame was out, and flicked it in the direction of the sink.

“You’re dead, you know.” I told him plainly, still clutching the letter opener with its dull blade pointed at him. My knuckles had gone white. “Six feet under in fucking Virginia.”

“Something like that,” He sucked on his cigarette and exhaled, somewhere between bored and disappointed, “I’m here and there. Los Angeles to Boston to Brooklyn. These taste dreadful.”

“What the fuck?” 

He tossed a glance over his shoulder, letting me take in the sight of his profile, which was scarred now, with a charred burn mark on the skin surrounding a gaping, gorey hole in the side of his skull. 

“There’s something you’ve got left to do.” He lifted his cigarette to his lips again, and at that exact moment, the front door opened and I spun around. Francis had a paper bag of groceries tucked in one arm and walked inside nonchalantly. 

“Richard,” He called after me, “I got a loaf of that raisin Brioche that you like--” He paused, and looked at me while he kicked the door back into its jamb. “Why are you gaping at me like an idiot with a knife?”

I watched Francis walk across the apartment, unbothered, through the sunbeams where Henry had just been, and into the kitchen. He looked at me somewhere between terribly expectant of me and like I was absolutely stupid.

“Put that down. Are you coming to help or not?”

I dropped the letter-opener on top of the mail once more and walked into the kitchen hesitantly, pausing in the doorway. Francis began handing me groceries to put away while he talked about his shopping trip. I glanced in the sink and saw the used match stuck near the drain. There was a delicate pile of cold cigarette ash that was crushed below the sole of my barefoot.

~~~

Francis had his arms crossed and his hips leaning against the edge of the kitchen counter.

“A ghost?” He was smoking a cigarette and staring at me like I was a fool.

“I mean, I think so.”

“ _Henry’s_ ghost? In our crappy apartment?”

“I think so.” I repeated. He only stared at me, doubtful. “You don’t believe me.” I finally realized. He shook his head and kept smoking.

“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that much. I believe in them just as much as Homer did.” He finally told me while smoke spilled out of his nostrils. “It’s just a little unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“Camilla told me she thought he was still around. Haunting her instead.” I said.

“So Henry’s been making his rounds? For what reason? To make us feel guilty?”

“Do we even have anything to feel guilty about?”

“Besides killing two people, you mean, obviously.” He tried. No reason to talk in circles around it.

“Obviously. Though, I only killed one of them. And I do feel bad about those things, but not enough to get punished for it.” I said, and he nodded along sympathetically. He crushed his cigarette in an ashtray on the counter and turned. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a jar of peanut butter.

“Life goes on, I guess. If Henry wants to haunt us, let’s just let him have his post-mortem fun. At least  
we know it isn’t come demonic nonsense risen to smite us for our sins. Would you like a some lunch, darling?” 

~~~

Francis never seemed to notice the ghost in the apartment, or, I was finally going insane. It seemed like everyday something out of place would happen, something odd and subtle enough to strike up a painful tug in my heart over unresolved feelings when I remembered Henry. However, Francis and I got on as if it wasn’t an issue. We were happy enough, in our own ways. It wasn’t the best, but it was certainly good. 

It wasn’t until that next winter that Francis came home with tear tracks frozen on his cheeks and a bloody cut somewhere along his hairline that I truly felt anxiety wash over me. He collapsed in my arms and tried desperately not to cry. It took half a bottle of scotch split between the two of us before he admitted he tried to fight some larger men.

“Why the hell did you do that?” I asked.

“There was a young couple. Two girls, seventeen and fierce looking but absolutely tiny, Richard. They were skinny as rakes. Probably homeless, by the looks of it. These men were this close to assaulting them. I couldn’t let them get hurt.” He blurted out, all in one hurried exhale.

“Oh.” It all clicked into place. My heart began to sink in my chest.

“So I tossed a few punches and got the shit kicked out of me, but the girls got away.” 

I didn’t say anything, but drew Francis in close and held him against me, just to know he was safe and there next to me, at least. There wasn’t any danger or hate in my arms, and I sorely wished he understood that as genuinely as I felt it in my heart. It was easy to look past the glares of strangers and to pretend to not hear the cruel comments, but true violence like this made my heart ache for him, for myself, and for everyone like us. We finished the bottle of scotch, kissed, and felt secretive and maudlin. It was this evening in particular that I realized how much I genuinely cared for Francis, how much I loathed to be anywhere than with him. 

That night, when Francis was asleep on my chest, I heard Henry’s shadow marching around the apartment, whispering poems softly enough for me to never quite identify. Knowing he was there, or that maybe he wasn’t there, was slowly driving me out of my head. _You’ve got something left to do_ bounced around my skull every night, like a riddle I wasn’t able to solve. So; I spent my nights with my fingers entwined in Francis' hair as he slept soundly in my arms, recalling of every instance wherein Henry Winter had seemed to be my scholar, my savior, and the stoic genius who stole my mind and planned my downfall with meticulous ease.

~~~

Halfway to spring, the dryer in our apartment broke down. Promptly, Francis began calling around for a repair service, and I instead went out to buy us an drying rack for the laundry. Francis bickered, obnoxiously, with whoever picked up the phone, trying to have an estimate done without anyone coming into our home. Meanwhile, I folded the sheets over the wooden frame so they would air-dry in the living room. Francis stomped down the hall for the fiftieth time that afternoon, insisting to the other caller that there was something wrong with the drain pipe, but that they didn't need to come look, just to come fix it.

I smiled fondly as I draped a sheet over the rack's poles. When I turned around, the basket of linens had been overturned and spilt all over the floor. I looked around after I picked up the basket and saw a top-sheet draped elegantly over a figure that was sitting stiffly on the edge of the sofa. It startled me but it wasn’t frightening.

“Any closer to figuring things out?” Henry’s voice came from the figure. The head below the sheet cocked to one side as it asked.

“This is rather tacky, isn’t it?” I said, clutching a pillow case until my knuckles went white.

“Maybe so. No harm in something classic, though.”

“All I do is think about Hampden,” I confessed, and then corrected myself. “about you.”

“Well, let the past stay where it is, Richard. It doesn’t help you now.” He told me.

Francis began knocking things around, and as his footsteps padded back to the living room, the figure below the sheet disappeared and the sheet fluttered delicately to the floor.

~~~

Interestingly enough, our bathroom locked from both sides of the door. We rarely had the door actually locked simply because the two of us had reached a point that was comfortable enough we felt no need to use them. I spent the night tossing and turning, trying to figure how many hours of rest I would get if I fell asleep right at that second. There was an undercurrent of frazzled nerves that I seemed to be caught in. I finally decided to walk around and see if that did anything to help. 

In front of the bathroom mirror, I inspected my face. Every hair and pore seemed magnified tenfold to my exhausted eyes, which was disgusting and personal in a way I never wanted to be with my own self. I turned on the faucet, waiting for the water to turn cold. My elbows leaned against the porcelain edges of the basin and I simply held my hands underneath the stream. The temperature was uncomfortable. I scrubbed in the spots between my knuckles and along the backs of my hands with a washcloth until they were red and raw. I submerged my face in the cold basin of water and kept it there, still. There had been a thought that danced through my mind: could I kill myself like this? So I stayed there, underwater, feeling rather experimental, and counted the seconds.

When my lungs began to strain for oxygen and my heartbeat was pounding loudly enough to hear in the temples of my skull (one minute and a 26 seconds later), I decided, no, I couldn’t kill myself in the sink. I pulled back and out and reached blindly for a towel. Breathing deeply into the terrycloth I thought about the man in my bed who tried to kill himself in a bathroom too. Water dripped from my hair down onto my neck and down my spine and I wondered when did bathrooms become such a morbid place?

I had tried to leave, only the knob wouldn’t turn, because it had been locked from the outside. I stood like a fool, struggling to understand the situation and wrestling the door back and forth in its jamb. I heard a laugh, then, a deep rumbling laugh I hadn’t heard in years, mocking my panic from the other side of the door. The lock clicked, I had felt the mechanics in the bolt shift, and pushed the door open. A shadow danced down the hallway away from me and I crept back into bed as if nothing happened. 

Francis stirred, and pulled the blankets back over me in a half-asleep stupor.

“What were you doing?” He slurred into his pillow.

“The ghost locked me in the bathroom from the hallway.” I explained.

“He didn’t need to be such a bitch about it.” He sighed and slipped back to sleep.

During breakfast the morning after, Francis bemoaned the dark circles below my eyes for me, carefully tracing the bruised crescents of my eyes with the pad of his thumb while he leaned over the plates of scrambled eggs between us.

~~~

We had ups and downs, just as any couple, with more ups than downs in the long run, thankfully. It was nearly my thirtieth birthday, and a few months from the closest thing to an anniversary that we had, when I confessed to Francis that I always suspected we would end up together. My head was in his lap, while he sat reading comfortably on the couch and he put his book aside and grinned down at me, his reading glasses slipping down his nose.

“Even in school?” He had asked me.

“Especially in school. What happened was terrible,” I told him. He nodded in agreement, listening to the justification in my voice. “But I loved it. I loved being with you all.” I stubbed out my cigarette in an ashtray on the floor.

“I wish you hadn’t been so fucking closeted back then. I was convinced Henry was going to sweep you off your feet before I even had a chance.” He told me casually, bringing his book back up.

This threw me for a turn, “Really?”

He hummed affirmatively while he smoked.

“He did love you, I think. Loved all of us, in his own pretentious, isolated way.”

And, perhaps, he did. Perhaps, that what had haunted me for the larger part of my life: the fact that Henry loved me the whole time, but never enough to outweigh Camilla or Bunny or Julian, to outweigh his sacrifices, to outweigh the trauma of it all. Whatever Henry had felt for us-- for me-- it was strong enough for him to kill himself to protect the rest of us. So that we could live, so that we could move on from the romantic days of Greek ideas and the frantic nights of murder. Francis put his book on the side table.

“You know, Richard, I do love you, despite it all.” 

And despite it all, we kept living. Whatever we called love, we all had been quivering before it for our entire lives. We were driven each day by the fragile line between a collective fear of death and the insatiable desire to live. But when I realized this, it was Henry’s voice in the bouncing around in the back of my skull that screamed at me, _not just to live, but to live forever._


End file.
